


Blood is rare (and sweet as cherry wine)

by demonn



Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Botanical gardens (mentioned), Developing Relationships, M/M, Soft Bucky, Soft Tony, Steve Rogers mentioned - Freeform, a lot about female, confusing chaos things, i really can’t help it, i really love writing like this ok, lowkey pining, more poetic than anything else., not the green haired god thing but it’s coming up, pre slash, pure fluff with like a smidgen if angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-22
Updated: 2019-01-22
Packaged: 2019-10-14 16:52:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,852
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17512361
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/demonn/pseuds/demonn
Summary: Bucky had always idolised the thought of divine perfection. Always held that secret close to his heart and breathed in the hallowed bitterness that tinged every word, because, in actuality, could anyone on this mortal plane (this earth in general, really) achieve such aching perfection.





	Blood is rare (and sweet as cherry wine)

**Author's Note:**

> Ok, just a one shot I wanted to write because I was feeling a little poetic. I like writing like this. It’s fun.

Bucky had always idolised the thought of divine perfection. Always held that secret close to his heart and breathed in the hallowed bitterness that tinged every word, because, in actuality, could anyone on this mortal plane (this earth in general, really) achieve such aching perfection.

He sat on the chair in the cafe, holding the mug of hot chocolate close to his chest as his eyes flicked over every word on the wall in front of him, traced his eyes over the groves and edges and sharp black lines like they were nothing more than a hydra he was meant to be tracking. Too personal to be distant, to impersonal for him to hold the words to any value.

But god, they were beautifully strung together. Line after line depicting the chaos that had befallen mankind when Eve ate the apple, when Helen left her kingdom for a man, when Persephone took hades hand and descended into the underworld, leaving the Earth to rot in her mothers anger. ( _the apple, the apple, the apple)_

It ended off on a warning tone, if anything, a reminder that women had almost bought the world to its knees and they would do it again in a heartbeat when given the chance.

Bucky leaned back in his chair, taking another scalding sip of his hot chocolate, letting the inky blackness of the sky take him away in ways most raw, most natural. He would sit, sometimes, with Tony, watching the sky but not the stars because some things were still to raw to talk about, to even entertain.

(“I have nightmares, sometimes. After all this time. I can’t- I can’t fall asleep without the curtains drawn,” Tony’s voice shook with every new word. “I think they’re watching me, the stars, the people inside them. Watching me, always watching me.”

“I get it, to a point,” Bucky offered,” I’ve never been able to shake the feeling that hydra’s watching me through the window, trying to get a glimpse of their missing asset so they know just how to break me when they get their hands back on me.”

Bucky smiled sadly, the corners of his mouth upturned in what could only be described as mocking imitation.

“Good luck with that though,” he said, more to himself than Tony. “You can’t break what’s already broken.”)

They’d formed a tentative friendship over their mutual dislike for Steve Rogers and the rest of the rogue avengers. It had started out, like most of the things in Bucky’s life, filled with darkness and despair.

He’d sat and thought of himself as a puppet dancing to Steve’s macabre tune, and shockingly , Tony had agreed. Had taken the words in his throat and twisted them into something worth saying, worth releasing into the air.

But sometimes, Tony’s knack for saying what Bucky was feeling didn’t work. Sometimes, he had to go down, down, down, until he was on the employees floor and sit and stare into space in the communal cafe, willing himself not to turn to stone.

“You ok there? Looking a little tired?” The lady looked down on him almost carefully, like she was afraid he was going to crack under he gaze.

“Don’t think I’m ok tonight,” he admitted,” and I’m always a little tired but I’m fine, by my standards.”

“So by my standards you’re not fine.” She took a seat opposite him, pulling her marigold coloured hair into a messy bun. “I’m a nurse, I have high standards and not just in women.”

A laugh rose out of his throat unbidden, crushing the cage that house the ache there. “I’m always ‘fine’ lady, jus’ feeling a little less fine tonight.”

“Yeah, that’s not good either way, I like the look of you, you have nice hair, and you’re a lonely gay in New York,” she smiled a little,” before you ask your shirt says your gay so I have a feeling you’re out of the closet.”

“Definitely out of the closet.”

“Couldn’t tell.” The lady grinned again, accentuating the laugh lines around her eyes, evidence she’d had reasons to laugh along the years. “I’m Marigold, but my friends call me Mari.”

“James, but my friends call me Bucky.”

-

Marigold, Bucky found, proved an excellent conversationalist. She could respond to his morbid humour with something equally as morbid. She could bat away Bucky’s avoidance tactics like she was a skilled tennis player (hint: she was, a compromise between her father wanting her to play cricket and her mother wanting her to play lacrosse.) only to launch him into an entirely new topic and before he knew it she knew half his afternoon.

There was the lingering feeling that she was hydra, that she had been sent to figure out just how to shatter him and make him pliant again (all you had to do was give him a shred of genuine, affection with no hidden agenda and he would come running back into your arms) but there was something... else about her. Something purer than hydra could ever be.

“You should dye your hair, something bright. Flashy. No, different,” she frowned, reaching out to pick up a brown lock before letting it fall, pulling her hand back slowly as to hit spook him. “I know you’re a brunette but have you ever thought of going mousy, ditch those chocolate locks of yours?”

“Steve already hates my hair as it is, I don’t want to make him anymore disappointed,” Bucky faltered,latching his mug so hard he was sure it would shatter. “I don’t want to make anyone else disappointed.”

Marigold sighed. “I’m a nurse, dearie, in the psychiatric ward. I can tell you for sure that you’re never going to get rid of this feeling if you do everything for other people. Dye your hair, don’t dye your hair, cut you hair, shave your head, grow it out, whatever, but you have to do it for yourself.”

Her brown skin glowed in the light of dawn, a hesitant smile slipping onto her face. “It’s why you look so heartbroken, dearie. Always thinking of others and not yourself.”

“I don’t want to be selfish,” he said, instead of responding to what she had said before, stowing the words away for later. When he was more clear eyed. “I don’t deserve to be selfish.”

“We don’t deserve anything,” Marigold hedged. “Humans don’t deserve anything. These woman: Helen of Troy, Persephone, Eve, Pandora. They all had the right idea, in a way. Bring man to its knees before it can set the world on fire. Make them learn the lesson before they’ve even planned it. Bring chaos to this world in the form of a women. Just, man is not that simple. We are intricate, complicated, ever-changing. I can’t say I will be the same as I am tomorrow, you can’t say that either. I may run off back to India because my girlfriend breaks up with me because she’s stopped loving me. My loved ones could die. I can’t control it, like they couldn’t control whether man would fall to their knees.”

“I don’t understand,” Bucky said, eyebrows scrunched,” are you telling me to bring chaos into my life and hope for the best?”

“Hope, pray, whatever! But you cannot keep the chaos at bay. Yes, these women failed to bring the world to its knees but for a fleeting moment, they could have. You’ve got to feel calm, dearie, before you even entertain the notion of chaos.”

“I want to live in the calm, I’ve had enough-“

“Chaos?” She finished. “I get it. But how much of that did you control? You have to take the chance is what I’m saying, try to get the man. There’s only so many times a man can break before you can’t put him back together again and you, my dear friend, look like the plate my mother used to throw at the wall when my brother did something stupid.”

Her words were tinged with a sense of finality, like the moment they were said they were called in existence. A single thread cone ting Bucky to Tony to her to the rest of the universe. Infinite. Painless. A promise for calm.

“But he’s- he’s Tony! What do I have to offer that the man has not had already?”

Bucky shook, the handle of the mug finally splintering just the slightest in his palm. He set it down, inching away like it was an explosive set to detonate any minute from then. His eyes tracked the cracks in the handle, wishing he could fix them and removed any trace of his anger (of his pain, his longing, his suffering) from the world.

“You give him your body, your heart, your mind. God knows I wouldn’t have gotten my Valeriya if I hadn’t done all that. And besides, heartache cannot rule your life.”

Bucky smiled for a second, looking back to the starting sentence on the wall.

( _god_ _made_ _the_ _apple_ _knowing_ _Eve_   _would take it, thus began the chaos_ )

“God knew a lot more than he let on.”

-

Tony cornered Bucky just after he got up from his chat with Marigold. He was still clutching her number in his hand with instructions on how to dye hair., the brand he should get written down in her neat scrawl. I’m a nurse, she had insisted, messy so the doctor can read it, neat so the patients can as well.

“Friday tells me you met one of the nurses in the cafe, stayed there for a couple of hours,” Tony cast him a wary look,” she giving you any trouble?”

“No,” Bucky said,” Marigold is just persistent, she knew what was good for me and she wanted me to me to know it as well. Besides, she knows how to keep up a conversation.”

“After one meeting?”

Bucky shrugged, before he remembered her words and tensed. _Heartache cannot rule your life_.

“Tony? You got anything going on today? I was just wondering if you wanted to come to the botanical gardens with me? Make a day of it or something? My treat.”

Tony took a step back, the blue of extremis in his eyes inching towards something more electric.

“You don’t have to come if you don’t want to!” Bucky rushed to say. “Just thought it would be nice. A a date, ya’ know.”

Tony considered him for a second before smiling. “That would be nice. That would be very nice.”

Bucky grinned, the sought of it against the backdrop of the rising sky almost holy in its beauty. “Is 12 ok for you?”

Tony nodded, retreating back to his mug of coffee.

Marigold was right, sometimes you had to take the plunge, you could not let heartache rule your life. You could not let calmness rule your life. You had to take control of the chaos sometimes and bend it to your will.

(The next week, kiss drunk and aching, Bucky dyed his hair that soft brown that Marigold had suggested, leaning with Tony on the bathroom sink as he grinned.)

(Somewhere, someplace, god laughed)


End file.
